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Information & Management 44 (2007) 142–153
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Advancement, voluntary turnover and women in IT:
A cognitive study of work–family conflict
Deborah J. Armstrong a,*, Cynthia K. Riemenschneider a, Myria W. Allen b,
Margaret F. Reid c
a
Information Systems Department, Sam M. Walton College of Business, University of Arkansas, Fayetteville, AR 72701, USA
Department of Communication, Fulbright College of Arts and Science, University of Arkansas, Fayetteville, AR 72701, USA
c
Department of Political Science, Fulbright College of Arts and Science, University of Arkansas, Fayetteville, AR 72701, USA
b
Received 27 March 2005; received in revised form 27 October 2006; accepted 7 November 2006
Available online 2 January 2007
Abstract
We used quality of work life theory and the causal mapping method to evoke the concepts and linkages of women’s cognitions
about work–family conflict in order to better understand the issues contributing to advancement barriers and voluntary turnover of
women in IT. The major concepts (Managing Family Responsibilities, Work Stress, Work Schedule Flexibility, and Job Qualities)
were found to not only impact each other but also were key factors influencing women’s advancement opportunities and voluntary
turnover. Organizations may use these insights to mitigate voluntary turnover and increase workforce diversity by addressing female
IT professionals’ concerns regarding work–family conflict issues.
# 2006 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.
Keywords: Gender and information technology; Work–family conflict; Glass ceiling; Turnover; Cognition; Causal mapping
1. Introduction
Studies since the late 1970s have suggested that
information technology (IT) professionals exhibit characteristics that differ from those in other professions. In a
frequently cited study, Couger and Zawacki [19]
surveyed more than 1600 data processing employees.
Their findings indicated that these individuals showed a
significantly higher need for challenging work but a
significantly lower need for social interaction. More
recently, Wynekoop and Walz [78] compared personality
characteristics of IT professionals to population norms
* Corresponding author. Tel.: +1 479 575 6158;
fax: +1 479 575 4168.
E-mail address: [email protected] (D.J. Armstrong).
0378-7206/$ – see front matter # 2006 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.
doi:10.1016/j.im.2006.11.005
and found that IT professionals were more ambitious,
logical, and conservative. Research has found that
members of the IT workforce possess unique attitudes,
interests, sense of identity, and work consciousness [57].
Furthermore, the work setting faced by IT professionals has some unique features. The IT environment is
characterized by work practices that often include long
hours, late nights, after-hour meetings, on-call duty, and
a continual state of ‘rush’ or crisis [1]. It is characterized
by rapid technological change, with new technical skills
appearing and others becoming obsolete.
IT is also different from other traditionally maledominated occupational fields like accounting and
medicine where female participation is rising, whereas
the number of women in the IT field is declining [5,10].
This has triggered discussions on how to retain IT
employees with particular focus on how workplace
D.J. Armstrong et al. / Information & Management 44 (2007) 142–153
conditions may impose barriers to women’s advancement (often known as the glass ceiling) and lead them to
leave their employer [42]. It is widely recognized that
female participation in the computing disciplines needs
to be encouraged [71] not only in terms of gender
balance, but also as a means of meeting current and
future demands for qualified employees.
Our study examined female IT professionals’
cognitions about balancing work and family issues
within the context of advancement and voluntary
turnover. By focusing on how women in the IT field
balance work and family we can further assist gender
sensitive research and funding organizations in their
search for ways to increase diversity and retain nontraditional workers. Our study was initiated to answer
two questions:
(a) How do women in IT perceive the interaction of
work and family responsibilities? and
(b) If there is an interaction, how do these women see it
affecting advancement and voluntary turnover?
2. Previous research
2.1. Gender in the information technology
workplace
Prior research on gender in the IT workplace has
centered on four themes:
(a) Gender differences in the use of technology, such as
the perception and frequency of email use [26];
technology adoption and usage intentions [73]; the
impact of Internet usage on the salary gap [28]; and
motivation to telecommute [11].
(b) Career orientations and voluntary turnover intentions [37] and strategies employed by successful
female IT professionals [58].
(c) Comparative studies that offer insights into cultural
or workplace differences of status, stress, voluntary
turnover intentions and salary in Australia and New
Zealand [70,74], the United Kingdom [61], Singapore [69], Germany [56], and Finland [72].
(d) Workplace conditions of women in IT, including
discriminatory practices that reinforce work practices and job segregation [77]. Impediments to the
advancement of women and established discriminatory practices have, of course, existed in other
fields and it seems that women in IT positions
encounter similar barriers, obstacles to advancement, lack of quality mentoring, and lack of choice
assignments. As a consequence, women tend to
143
receive lower salaries, are seen as having less
favorable promotion chances, and are filling fewer
management positions [38].
Several authors (e.g., [13,32]) have focused on
identifying workplace conditions that constitute organizational barriers, and may explain women’s reluctance to enter or remain in the IT workforce. Ahuja
proposed a set of barriers to the advancement of women
in IT including social factors (e.g., anxiety and limited
self-efficacy), structural factors (e.g., occupational
culture and lack of role models), and work–family
conflict (which has only recently been addressed).
2.2. Quality of work life and work–family conflict
Quality of work life is defined as satisfying an
employee’s needs via the resources, activities and
outcomes that arise from involvement in the workplace
[66], and has been found to influence intention to quit
[15,43]. There are several different perspectives of
quality of work life [46]. The spillover model [39]
suggests that satisfaction experienced in one domain
(e.g., work) may have a positive or negative effect on
other domain(s) (e.g., family life) and vice versa [67].
Consistent with this model, work–family conflict is
defined as an individual’s cognitions about how work
and family roles exert incompatible pressures [21]. In
other disciplines such conflicts have been identified as a
source of stress [8,24,54] and can affect organizations in
terms of the lost time, reduced productivity [41], and
eventually voluntary turnover [25,63] of employees.
Researchers have also found that an individual’s
quality of work life is influenced by his or her work
experience and future career expectations [16,34].
Work–family conflict may also negatively affect career
advancement [59,68]. In their study of female bank
managers Liff and Ward [44] found that the women’s
colleagues and bosses did not see senior management as
an appropriate objective for them. These messages were
conveyed by negative comments about women who had
been promoted, and via the assumption that all woman
would want to have children and give them priority over
work.
3. Method
3.1. Overview
In our study, we use a rich qualitative method and a
cognitive perspective in measuring the concepts and
linkages regarding work and family, in order to
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D.J. Armstrong et al. / Information & Management 44 (2007) 142–153
understand how the workplace issues women perceive
interact and influence voluntary turnover and perceived
promotion opportunities. Causal mapping is a collection
of techniques that allows a researcher to capture the
cognitions of an individual [36], or group [12,22], by
evoking the concepts from the participants, and the
structure of the cause and effect relationships into which
the participants placed them [7,53]. We used causal
mapping to study the cognitive representations about
women by eliciting perceptions of the issues they face
and casting them into structural representations. The
approach was consistent with the procedure detailed
elsewhere [4,55].
3.2. Data collection
Our data source was six focus groups totaling 39
women employed in the IT field at a Fortune 500
manufacturing organization. Narratives were gathered
from the respondents through open-ended focus group
interviews.
3.2.1. Sample
The focal organization employs more than 120,000
people in 22 states and countries. The IT department
serves 8500 people located at corporate headquarters.
All participants are at corporate headquarters in the
mid-south region of the United States, thus although the
organization was a multinational, this was not reflected
in the ethnicity of our respondents. The total number of
employees in the IT department was 300, and there were
73 female IT employees. The sample consisted of 39 of
these women, a 53% response rate. Our sample size
while small was consistent with the sample sizes in
other qualitative studies (e.g., [2,31]), and met accepted
key features in qualitative research sampling criteria
[20,51].
The company’s human resources director sent
information about the study to all of the organization’s
female IT employees. She then contacted the potential
participants and assigned them to the focus groups. We
admit that the grouping of the subjects might have
influenced the group dynamics if informal leaders
within each group had led a discussion.1 However, by
having two researchers present in each meeting we
sought to minimize this problem by drawing out quieter
participants and redirecting the discussion if any one
participant appeared to be taking control.
The majority of participants had only worked in IT
for the focal company (49%) or for the focal company
and one previous employer (31%). The ‘‘average’’
participant had worked in IT for 8 years, with 54%
having worked in IT for 5 years or less. Various job titles
were represented; the most frequently given were
programmer, programmer/analyst, project leader,
senior business analyst, and senior programmer analyst.
See Table 1 for a complete listing of all participants’
titles. Only 15% were self-identified managers, and they
supervised between 3 and 11 employees. Some of the
women were single, some had grown children, some
had babies or were pregnant, and some were in the
middle of parenting. Thus, the data evoked in the
interviews were the salient and intertwined concepts
generated by a heterogeneous group of women working
in the IT field.
3.2.2. Focus groups
Narratives were gathered during six 1 h long focus
group meetings held in workplace conference rooms
over a 2-week period with between four and eight
women in each group. This arrangement allowed us to
interact face-to-face with the women and elicit their
views on the workplace issues they faced. The focus
group format is designed to allow respondents to build
on one another’s comments [76].
Our procedure consisted of open-ended questions
with probes [62]. The 39 women discussed several
questions of relevance to our study; for example, one
Table 1
Participant job titles
Job title
Number of participants
Administrator
Associate Programmer
Database Analyst
Data Entry Clerk
Enterprise Reporting Group
IS Procurement
Programmer
Programmer/Analyst
Project Coordinator
Project Leader
Repairs Field Personnel
Sales
Senior Business Analyst
Senior Programmer/Analyst
Senior Project Leader
Supervisor
Systems Administrator
Technical Writer
Undeclared
1
1
1
1
1
1
4
4
1
3
1
1
2
2
1
1
1
1
11
Total
39
1
We would like to thank an anonymous reviewer for this insightful
comment.
D.J. Armstrong et al. / Information & Management 44 (2007) 142–153
question was: ‘‘What challenges do you think women in
IT face that their male peers do not?’’ All questions put
to the groups focused on work aspects; no questions
asked about family or leisure activities (see Appendix A
for the interview guide). The themes related to work–
family conflict were generated by the respondents.
Based on the answers to a question, follow up probes
were asked to elicit details of the respondents’
experiences. Audiotapes made during the meetings
were transcribed, resulting in between 14 and 22 pages
per session.
3.3. Deriving revealed causal maps
The first task in deriving the maps was to identify the
causal (cause–effect) statements from the transcripts.
These statements are identified through the use of key
words (such as because or so). Due to differences in the
authors’ backgrounds, all four of us independently
coded each interview text. Once each author coded the
texts, comparisons were made for agreement and
disagreement. Where disagreement occurred, the discrepancies were resolved through discussion; thus the
authors’ biases were neutralized. The causal statements
were then separated into cause and effect phrases which
were used to construct raw causal maps.
In a separate process, the relevant concepts were
identified (using the participants’ statements). One
researcher read all the transcripts and inductively
generated a list of preliminary coding categories, then
the other authors read the material to verify their face
validity and assess the parsimony and coverage of the
categories. Scott’s pi [65] was calculated using 3 of the
6 transcripts and 11 of the coding categories. It
estimates the reliability of the coding process; i.e.,
whether the reviewers agreed on the categories more
often than they would if they had been randomly
selecting concepts. A heuristic for content analysis is to
require a reliability coefficient of 0.90 or more when
using Holsti’s formula, and approximately 0.75 or more
when using pi or alpha [35]. For our study, Scott’s pi
ranged from 0.72 to 0.77 between the coders, indicating
an acceptable level of reliability.
Congruent with studies in the management and IT
literature [29,30], and to reinforce conceptual validity,
the groupings were examined for theoretical and logical
relevance, and placed into categories to create a coding
scheme. Once the coding scheme was completed, the
causal statements for each respondent were placed into
the appropriate categories. Using the categories in place
of the cause and effect phrases in the raw maps, the
causal maps were developed. A causal map was
145
developed for each of the six focus groups. The six
maps were then aggregated by adding together the
concepts and linkages of each causal map [52]. The
union of all concepts and linkages from the individual
maps were placed on the final aggregate map.
As the concepts emerged from the participants, the
point of redundancy represented the point at which
further data collection would not provide additional
concepts [27]. The point of redundancy was computed
by aggregating the concepts mentioned by each
participant. No new concepts were elicited from the
sixth focus group, so redundancy was reached by the
fifth focus group interview eliciting a total of 63
concepts. This suggested that the sample of six focus
groups (39 women) was sufficient to capture all of the
relevant concepts in the sample.
After the maps had been developed, the next task was
to analyze the maps based on past research using this
method [23]. There are two aspects of analyzing a
causal map: its content and structure. The content
analysis consists of identifying and defining the
concepts contained in the domain under study. The
structural analysis consists of analyzing the linkages
between the concepts. The measures used in the
structural analysis are from social network analysis
and include the adjacency and reachability matrices,
and centrality measures. See [60] for details of the
measures used.
Reachability is an indicator of the total strength of
the connection between concepts. The higher the
reachability, the greater the strength of the connection
(direct effect) and/or the greater the number of paths
that can be used to connect the concepts (indirect
effects) [64]. Reachability is reported on the linkage
between the nodes on the revealed causal map. The first
step in calculating the reachability matrix is to develop
an adjacency matrix which captures the direct relationships between two concepts. We were interested in the
occurrence and strength of the relationship so the
adjacency matrix we used contained values between 0
and 22 (in each cell). Centrality is a measure of the
relative importance of a concept or how involved it is in
the cognitive structure. It is a ratio of the sum of the
linkages involving the concept divided by the total
linkages in the matrix [40].
4. Results
4.1. Concepts and linkages
There were 12 major concepts that constituted the
cognitive structure of the issues in the workplace. Each
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D.J. Armstrong et al. / Information & Management 44 (2007) 142–153
Table 2
Concept level classification scheme
Concept
Definition
Examples
Actions the company can take
Actions the company can take to solve
problems, increase performance
Barriers: promotion
Problems being promoted or lack of
opportunities for promotion
References to other companies,
comparison to other companies
Care for family members (children,
home, spouse)
Flexibility; give and take; come and
go when needed; reduced work schedule
Stagnant management holders are moved out;
So they look for you to have physical ties,
emotional ties to the area
I don’t have a chance at promotion; Then you
just can’t go any further
At X [different company] all, not all, most of the
majority of the management are women
I do have to go get my kids; If the family
is more important
If you need to leave and do some personal business;
I wanted to work part-time and still get some pay
during that time
If you are willing to put hours in; If you go to night
classes and learn it
You can’t change it; It was out of my control
She was in a different circumstance; X and I have
special work schedules
They like the challenge; They like better opportunities;
I was bored silly; I was on call 24 h a day 7 days a week
and got calls in the middle of the night
I personally have made that decision; She just wanted
a more low-keyed approach to life
Company comparisons
Managing family
responsibilities
Work schedule flexibility
Job qualities
Qualities, skills needed for job
Lack of control
My situation is different
This is how things are, You can’t change it
Cannot relate to what ‘‘everyone
else’’ is experiencing
Left job because bored, stressed,
project ambiguity
Reasons left: job
characteristics
Result of own decision
Work stress
People are responsible for their own
decisions; women make decisions
about family
Challenges of stress
Turnover
Turnover, leaving organization
is included in Table 2 and the overall causal map is
presented in Fig. 1. The arrows indicate the causal
relationships (linkages) between two concepts with the
arrow initiating from the cause concept and pointing
toward the effect concept.
For our study, the reachability ranged from 0 to 0.10
and a 0.05 reachability cutoff was used to improve map
readability. The criterion was used to focus on the most
central concepts of the work–family conflict issue. The
concepts with the highest average reachability were
Barriers: Promotion, Work Schedule Flexibility, Result
of Own Decision, and Turnover. These are the most
reachable through direct and/or indirect paths. See
Fig. 1 for reachability values. For ease of understanding,
we provided the same information in Table 3. Here, the
cause concept is listed in the row and the effect concept
in the column.
Looking at Fig. 1, the Reasons Left: Job Characteristics, Company Comparisons, and My Situation is
Different concepts were the cause concepts because all
arrows involving them emanated from them. The
Actions the Company Can Take, Barriers: Promotion,
Result of Own Decision, Lack of Control, and Turnover
There was just so much stuff going on; Things were
more competitive; Working way too many hours
Most of the women had left way before 15–20 years;
I had folks that worked with me leave; I left, I just quit
concepts were effect concepts because all arrows
involving them pointed to them. Also advancement
barriers were not a strong reason for leaving as shown
by the lack of a connection between Barriers:
Promotion and Turnover.
The concepts with the highest centrality were
Barriers: Promotion at 1.015, Turnover at 0.940,
Managing Family Responsibilities and Job Qualities
both at 0.789, and Work Stress and Work Schedule
Flexibility both at 0.752. The higher centrality numbers
suggest that in this context these concepts played a
more prominent role in workplace issues than, for
example, My Situation is Different (0.301) (see
Table 4).
4.2. Loops
After the maps have been constructed patterns of
linkages emerge. In the systems dynamics literature, a
loop is defined as a closed path of linkages between
concepts that can begin and end with a concept [45,49].
The concepts within a loop directly influence each other
and the direction of the relationship is indicated. A
D.J. Armstrong et al. / Information & Management 44 (2007) 142–153
147
Fig. 1. Concept Level Causal Map. Note: Reachability values appear on the linkages as close to the arrowhead as possible.
relationship between two concepts is said to be positive
if an increase in the cause concept is accompanied by an
increase in the effect concept. Conversely, a relationship
is said to be negative if an increase in the cause is
accompanied by a decrease in the effect. In our study,
the causal statements were directionally coded (positive, negative, or neutral) independently by all four
authors. Comparisons were made for agreement and
disagreement, and discrepancies were resolved through
discussion.
Table 3
Reachability matrix for aggregated concept level causal map
Construct
A
B
C
D
E
F
G
H
I
J
K
L
A. Actions the company can take
B. Barriers: promotion
C. Company comparisons
D. Job qualities
E. Lack of control
F. Managing family responsibilities
G. My situation is different
H. Reasons left: job characteristics
I. Result of own decision
J. Turnover
K. Work schedule flexibility
L. Work stress
–
–
–
0.05
–
0.06
0.06
–
–
–
–
0.05
–
–
–
0.07
–
0.09
0.09
0.05
–
–
0.06
0.08
–
–
–
–
–
–
–
–
–
–
–
–
–
–
–
–
–
0.05
0.05
–
–
–
–
–
–
–
–
–
–
0.05
–
–
–
–
–
–
–
–
–
–
–
–
0.05
–
–
–
–
0.05
–
–
–
–
–
–
–
–
–
–
–
–
–
–
–
–
–
–
–
–
–
–
–
–
–
–
0.05
0.07
–
–
0.10
0.06
–
–
–
0.08
–
–
0.05
0.07
–
0.10
0.10
0.05
–
–
0.07
0.08
–
–
0.05
0.07
–
0.10
0.10
0.05
–
–
–
0.08
–
–
–
0.05
–
0.07
0.06
–
–
–
0.05
–
Note: 0.05 was used as the reachability cutoff.
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D.J. Armstrong et al. / Information & Management 44 (2007) 142–153
Table 4
Centrality
Concept
Centrality
Barriers: promotion
Turnover
Managing family responsibilities
Work stress
Work schedule flexibility
Job qualities
Lack of control
Company comparisons
Actions the company can take
Result of own decision
Reasons left: job characteristics
My situation is different
1.015
0.940
0.789
0.789
0.752
0.752
0.677
0.564
0.526
0.526
0.451
0.301
Loops with an even number of negative relationships
or no negative relationships are known as positive,
deviation amplifying, reinforcing, or ‘vicious cycles’
[75]; an increase [decrease] in the value of one variable
will lead to increases [decreases] in the other variables.
A system that contains a vicious cycle will continue
until it is destroyed or some dramatic change occurs to
break the cycle. In contrast, loops with an odd number
of negative relationships are known as negative,
deviation dampening, deviation counteracting, or
balancing cycles [48].
When analyzing the maps it was discovered that three
loops resulted from the participants’ responses, all with
positive components, resulting in deviation amplifying
loops, or vicious cycles. These three loops together
created a system. Each element in the loops was strongly
linked to voluntary turnover (and promotional barriers).
The loop system is represented in Fig. 2.
The first loop occurred between Managing Family
Responsibilities, Work Schedule Flexibility, and Work
Stress (see Fig. 3A). The Managing Family Responsibilities concept contained statements addressing children, family, being a mother and sharing responsibilities
with a spouse (although this was not necessarily equal).
The Managing Family Responsibilities concept was so
labeled because the participants focused on how they
managed their family responsibilities (not on the
pressure of balancing the roles). A work–family conflict
concept did not appear on the map because the number
of statements that addressed work interfering with
family and family interfering with work did not reach
the threshold needed to appear on the map.
Fig. 2. Work–family conflict system causal map.
D.J. Armstrong et al. / Information & Management 44 (2007) 142–153
149
pressure felt on the job. The second loop occurred
between Managing Family Responsibilities, Job
Qualities, and Work Stress (see Fig. 3B). The Job
Qualities concept contained statements that addressed
learning, using one’s intelligence, challenge, putting
forth effort, and self-reliance. The third loop occurred
between Managing Family Responsibilities, Job
Qualities, Work Schedule Flexibility, and Work Stress
(see Fig. 3C).
5. Discussion
Fig. 3. (A) Loop 1. (B) Loop 2. (C) Loop 3.
The Work Schedule Flexibility concept contained
two themes: reduced work hours (i.e., part time work)
and flexibility in time at work. Within this concept
many of the respondents focused on flextime. The
women did not want to work less hours, but to work
when needed and also deal with family concerns as
needed. The Work Stress concept contained statements
about multiple responsibilities at work, competition,
working long hours, deadlines, and the amount of
Women in IT perceive the interaction of work and
family as an interconnected system of loops constituted
by the concepts of family (Managing Family Responsibilities), work (Job Qualities), stress (Work Stress),
and time (Work Schedule Flexibility). The women
appear to perceive the interaction between work and
family as directly and indirectly impacting both
advancement opportunities and voluntary turnover.
In the first loop we saw that strong direct and indirect
linkages emerged between Managing Family Responsibilities, Work Stress, and Work Schedule Flexibility.
Managing Family Responsibilities deals with issues in
the women’s home life (e.g., sick children, adequate
daycare, sharing responsibilities with a spouse) while
Work Stress primarily dealt with issues in the workplace
(e.g., meeting deadlines, working overtime). Work
Schedule Flexibility was the bridge between the work
and family roles and involved issues such as being able
to arrange work schedules and taking time off work for
personal business. Flexible work schedules have been
associated with higher organizational commitment and
job satisfaction for women [64], and consistent with our
findings lower stress [3], and lower work–family
conflict [33].
Although a flexible schedule provides many benefits,
there could also be drawbacks in terms of promotion
opportunities. Researchers have found that participants
perceived female employees with flexible or reduced
work schedules as having less job-career dedication,
less advancement motivation, and higher likelihood of
turnover [18]. MacDermid et al. [47] found that the
women managers interviewed felt they had lost some
promotion opportunities because of using a reduced
work schedule. This negative repercussion of using a
flexible work schedule was consistent with the findings
of our study.
One avenue that may ease the stress of work–family
conflict for women (flextime) may not really be an
option if the woman is looking to advance within the
organization. As one woman stated,
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D.J. Armstrong et al. / Information & Management 44 (2007) 142–153
In IT everybody tends to work long hours at times,
weekends, work late, but there is no policy that
allows us to take time off to make up for any of that
. . . so you almost feel should I ask for it?
the method was applicable for this study and appropriately applied.
These work practices are a part of the IT occupational
culture that may be particularly demanding and present
work related stress for women. The tension created by
the need for a flexible work schedule can adversely
impact a woman’s promotional opportunities and lead
to voluntary turnover.
As the family responsibilities women face increase,
so might the importance of the IT job qualities, as can
be seen in Loops 2 and 3. Job Qualities contained
statements that addressed learning, using intelligence,
putting forth effort and time, and self-reliance. The IT
field is project-oriented with rapid technology changes
that make skills quickly obsolete, and require IT
workers to frequently re-skill. A willingness to acquire
diverse skills is an important success factor for a
woman working in IT; e.g., the linkage we found
between Job Qualities and Barriers: Promotion. Many
of the Job Qualities comments dealt with actions to
improve skill sets to further a career. Women face the
fear of their skills becoming obsolete, causing work
related stress, which interacts with the challenges of
managing family responsibilities. The importance or
attractiveness of IT job qualities also places an
increased importance on the need for flexibility in a
woman’s schedule. From the maps found in our
study, there is a vicious cycle in which work stress
plays a major role in the work–family conflict for
women in IT.
Our study demonstrated the value of causal
mapping in exploring cognition and provided some
new insights. One insight was provided by identifying
the vicious cycles women face when dealing with the
tensions between family responsibilities and the
unique job qualities required in an IT position. One
of the unique job qualities is the need for continual
learning (IT Job Qualities), which while often desired
by IT professionals, can place additional stress on the
individual. As seen in this study, this stress may
heighten work–family conflicts experienced by
women in IT. Organizations may want to look at
their current training and educational programs within
the context of re-tooling IT workers. Are women at a
disadvantage due to work schedules or extended
leave? An emphasis on flexible training options (e.g.,
self-paced training, online training, and paired
learning) may meet the women’s re-tooling needs,
improve advancement opportunities, and ultimately
decrease voluntary turnover intentions.
Contrary to management literature which has found
that work-role characteristics exerted a stronger influence
on work–family conflict than pressures originating from
the family-role (e.g. [6,9,17]), in our study the women’s
causal statements indicated that family responsibilities
did not cause stress; only work responsibilities did. One
explanation for our finding is that for the women in this
study if family responsibilities interfere with work roles,
it is somewhat expected and manageable; whereas if
work roles interfere with family responsibilities it is more
problematic and stressful. A flexible work schedule was
one option available to the women in this study to
attenuate this stress. An interesting aspect mentioned by
the women was the lack of consistency across the focal
organization. Senior executives may want to standardize
policies across the organization on various forms of
flexible work schedules and publicize these policies to
combat potential equity concerns. Even with an official
policy regarding flexible work schedules, women in IT
recognize that they must make difficult choices. Work
practices, such as long hours, late nights, and on-call duty
are one part of the IT occupational culture [50] that may
present work related stress for women; especially if a
woman has family responsibilities. Organizations might
mitigate voluntary turnover intentions and increase
diversity by addressing female IT professionals’ concerns regarding work–family conflict issues.
5.1. Limitations
The comments of the women in our study were made
about work in one organizational context and may not
apply to others or to all women. Our goal was to gather
contextualized knowledge from women in the IT
department and construct a domain specific mental
model. Another limitation is the female-only respondent pool, although we believed that having only
women participants was not a weakness. However, we
do not know that the issues are unique to women. One
final limitation concerns the causal mapping method
employed here. The coder may impute his or her own
assumptions into the coding. As with any such project a
large number of coding choices were made, and these
could alter the analysis and results [14]. To reduce this
potential bias, we used multiple raters (across disciplines) at every stage of the process. We believe that
6. Implications and conclusion
D.J. Armstrong et al. / Information & Management 44 (2007) 142–153
Acknowledgement
The authors would like to thank Manju Ahuja, Kay
M. Nelson, and the participants of the 2004 SIGIS
Cognitive Research Workshop for their helpful comments on earlier versions of this paper. The authors
would also like to acknowledge the Information
Technology Research Institute at the University of
Arkansas for assistance in the funding of this project.
Appendix A
Focus group questions:
1. Think back to why you left other IT positions in the
past and what your colleagues told you when they
decided to leave an organization. What was going on
in the organization you were working in that may
have caused either you or your friends to decide to
leave the organization?
2. Do you think women in the IT workplace face
different or more barriers than men? Please explain.
3. What challenges do you think women in IT face that
their male peers do not? Please explain.
4. If you were in charge, what kind of changes would
you made in your organization to better retain and
promote women?
5. What experiences have you had or what have you
heard from others that organizations are doing that
you think are especially effective in retaining female
IT employees?
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Deborah J. Armstrong is an assistant
professor of Information Systems in the
Sam M. Walton College of Business at
the University of Arkansas. Her research
includes issues at the intersection of IS
personnel and mental models involving
the human aspects of technology, change,
learning and cognition. Her articles have
appeared in journals such as the Journal of
Management Information Systems, Com-
153
munications of the ACM, and Sex Roles among others, and she has
co-edited a book Causal Mapping for Research in Information
Technology.
Cynthia K. Riemenschneider is Associate
Professor of Information Systems in the Sam
M. Walton College of Business at the University of Arkansas. Her publications have
appeared in Information Systems Research,
IEEE Transactions on Software Engineering, Journal of Management Information
Systems, Sex Roles, and others. She currently
conducts research on IT personnel issues, IT
adoption, and women in IT.
Myria Allen (Ph.D. Communication, University of Kentucky, 1988) is an Associate
Professor in the Department of Communication at the University of Arkansas, Fayetteville. Her research interests include
organizational communication and issues
related to gender and technology. Her
research has been published in the Journal
of Applied Communication Research, Management Communication Quarterly, Communication Monographs, Sex Roles, and Communication Yearbook
16.
Margaret Reid is Professor of Political
Science at the University of Arkansas. Her
current research focuses on gendered workplaces and complexities involving publicnonprofit alliances. She recently published
a book with Kerr and Miller, Glass Walls and
Glass Ceilings. Her work has been published
in Public Administration Review, Women &
Politics, Urban Affairs Review, Sex Roles
and numerous other outlets.